We’ve just completed a major revamp of the Bookit booking process. The new process is cleaner, feature-rich and requires only 1 or 2 steps to complete bookings. Early indicators are that the new booking process has directly increased conversions by up to 30%.

If you use BookIt on your own website you’re already running on the new version. We’ll be sending a detailed feature summary so look out for this in your inbox soon.

It has been a busy start to the year for the BookIt development team and we've just released our new 'daily inclusions' feature.

What is daily inclusion data you may ask?

It is a short summary of what your guests will enjoy with the room/product they book. Inclusion data should describe what the customer is paying for, eg "includes buffet breakfast for two and free wi-fi internet", rather than a full room description. This information will also appear on the Travelbug confirmation page and the traveller and operator confirmation emails.

Here's how it looks on Travelbug:

How to load inclusions data

If you are a customer of Siteminder, Seekom or STAAH you just need to ensure you have loaded inclusion data at that end and BookIt will do the rest. Take a look at your listing on Travelbug to see how it looks.

If you are not using one of the channel managers above you will need to load and manage the inclusions directly in your BookIt account.

1. Login to BookIt
2. Click on the 'Inventory Manager' tab
3. Click on the 'Manage inclusions' link
4. Enter your default inclusions for each product. Where a rate includes just the room, enter "Room only"
5. Click 'Save' when you are finished

If you need to enter separate inclusions for individual dates, click on 'Override inclusions' - again don't forget to click 'Save' when you are finished.

Both the BookIt booking confirmation email and booking details pages will include the relevant inclusions data for the booking, so you and your team know what the guest has paid for and is expecting.

Login to BookIt now

If you have any questions at all, please contact us any day of the week between 9am and 5pm on 0508 BOOKIT or support@bookit.co.nz

Happy inclusion-ing!

Great news Travelbuggers!

Travelbug itineraries are now supported by the world’s leading itinerary aggregation website – TripIt. TripIt turns chaos into order by making it easy for anyone to organise trip details into one master online itinerary, even if arrangements are booked at multiple sites.

Here’s how it works:

1. You make a booking on Travelbug ( and why wouldn’t you?  )
2. You receive your Travelbug confirmation email and forward it to plans@tripit.com
3. TripIt generates an itinerary for you which is then viewable on the TripIt website, or using one of their many supported apps including the iPhone and Blackberry handsets
4. You can then share this itinerary with whoever you want via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so forth. You can even add it to Outlook

Here’s how an itinerary looks all nicely formatted and viewable anytime, from anywhere, on the TripIt website: 

So get booking, and happy itinerary-building!

Cheers,

Daniel and the Travelbug team

I'm pleased to say that the reseller API now allows multiple accommodation categories to be queried. Instead of passing a single PIMCode parameter you can now pass a comma separated list of PIMCode parameters.

E.g. "HOT,MOT,BAB" - this would return all hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts.

If you pass nothing to the API it will return all types. The full list of PIMCodes are as follows:

Hotels	HOT
Motels	MOT
Bed and Breakfasts	BAB
Backpackers	BAK
Apartments	APT
Lodges	LOD
Holiday Parks	PRK
Holiday Houses	HSD

Trevor, our trusty Travelbug, turned three this year and we thought he deserved an upgrade. Everyday kiwis will now find it even easier to find and book great accommodation deals at over 2500 properties throughout New Zealand. The list of changes Trev' has seen to his home is a bit long for this blog post, but the results speak for themselves. Shoot over to Travelbug now and check it out for yourself. Trev says it's looking fantastic and we're sure travellers using the site will think so too.

When you're visiting the new site, keep an eye out for Trevor in the photos of one of the hotels featured on the homepage and you can go in the draw to win some U2 tickets.

Visit www.travelbug.co.nz now!

We've been running auctions for a little while, but until now one auction meant one winner and therefore one booking. Well, no more. Today we're pleased to announce the release of a fixed price offer feature that lets you turn one auction into many bookings.

When your BookIt-generated auction closes, you'll get a 'successful auction' email that contains a link to enter your fixed price offer details.

This takes you to BookIt where you complete just two fields and then click continue.

We then email all the Trade Me members that placed a bid on your auction (or added it to their watchlist) offering them the deal. As soon as the number you have offered have been redeemed on Travelbug, the offer expires.

But you can't make fixed price offers without first running auctions that generate interest, and the best way to do that is load cool, fun packages that grab attention.

The good people at SKYCITY Grand ran a $1 reserve auction for their Superior Suite package, created in their BookIt account. It sold for $275, had 1,880 pageviews and 196 bidders and watchers! If the fixed price offer had been available, they could have sent an offer at whatever price they wanted to those 196 people - that they already knew were interested in the auction - and nobody else would have been able to see the offer price.

And remember - Travelbug handles the bookings and sends the traveller emails, and BookIt takes care of the invoicing for you. Once you've loaded the auction you can just let the auction run its course and answer any questions that come through.

• use $1 reserves like SKYCITY - these get more views and more bids
• use a detailed description - you'll get fewer questions and bidders will be more comfortable
• load lots of photos - photos are free with BookIt auctions
• make the auction title interesting - use your business name and list the inclusions

Auctions are fun, but now they can generate a lot of exposure for your property and they can even sell a lot of rooms. The only thing limiting your success is how exciting you make your auctions. Login to BookIt and load some auctions today and try this new sales channel out for yourself.

Login to BookIt now

Here are a couple of comments from businesses that have been using BookIt-run auctions:

"The number of bids and views we get on our Trade Me auctions are awesome - it's great exposure for our hotel" - Briana Jellyman, Copthorne Hotel and Resort Bay of Islands

"Auctions have been great for our resort, to auction off distressed inventory but equally for exposure to Trade Me's very large audience: an audience we could not otherwise afford to market to! The auctions are very easy to set up and manage. And last but not least the team at BookIt are great to deal with!" - Jon Doherty, Terrace Downs Resort

If you have any questions, our support team is available 9am - 5pm, 7 days per week.

Unless you have been living under a rock you will know that as of midnight tonight the New Zealand GST rate is changing to 15%. We've been working hard to make sure the new rate is calculated correctly on bookings, amendments, cancellations and all GST invoices that we issue.

Below is the effect this change will have on your bookings:

Operators

• If you are GST registered, travellers will be invoiced at the new rate of 15% from midnight on 1 October (invoices are sent to customers with your name and GST number)
• Trade Me's booking fee/commission will be invoiced to you at the new rate of 15% from midnight on 1 October
• However the rate of 12.5% will apply for credit notes issued for cancellations of bookings confirmed prior to 1 October

• As Travelbug bookings are processed by BookIt, you will receive booking emails and invoices from BookIt. These are formatted differently to the old Vianet emails but have all the information you need. Here's an example of how your booking confirmation/invoice email will appear:
  
  
  
• You can now amend Travelbug bookings within your BookIt account, with extra charges or refunds processed automatically back to the traveller's credit card.
• The minimum cancellation fee on BookIt is $10, rather than the 20% minimum that was applied on Vianet. Please make sure you set your cancellation policies in BookIt on the 'Product setup' page.

• We've added BookIt traveller feedback to Travelbug so there may be some new feedback on your Travelbug listing page.
• Rankings have changed slightly as a result of the switch. Bugrank still applies, however, and offering instant confirmation is still the best way to rank highly in search results. Give us a call if you need help to move to instant confirmation.
• Regions and districts have changed, please check where you appear and make sure you are happy with your region and district. We can't add every little district but we'll do our best to help you out.

• By default, payment for BookIt bookings are made to your nominated account automatically 7 days before arrival, with weekly payment runs on a Thursday evening. If you already have a BookIt listing and have changed your payment terms, your settings will not have changed. You can view payments due on the 'Billing' tab within BookIt.
• If you have lost your BookIt login details go to http://business.bookit.co.nz/pub/PwdRecover.aspx and enter the email address ich this email was sent
• BookIt does not currently offer a text message notification service for booking requests and confirmations.

• We won't switch Vianet off until around the end of September. Funds for forward bookings are secure and will be paid out as normal.
• Please keep updating Vianet for self-retail (if using Vianet within your own site) and other Vianet reseller websites. If you don't want to manage instant confirmation on both systems, please use Vianet for on-request and make BookIt instant confirmation.
• If you use Vianet in your website for direct bookings, you will need to switch to BookIt. The code is available for you to download within your BookIt account so please let us know if you need any help with that.